From popular restaurants to abandoned campfires, hot spots are good and bad. Same goes in aviation. If you haven’t heard of the FAA’s “Hot Spot” program, you might not have any at your home airport. Perhaps you saw one when you flew somewhere and reviewed the airport diagram. What diagram? Gotcha!
Or, maybe you assume these don’t apply to non-towered airports. Think again. Hot Spots, appearing as numbered “HS” labels on many diagrams (displayed more prominently on Garmin’s SmartChart airport diagrams), are designed to alert pilots to tricky taxiway or runway intersections. We’ve seen in recent reports the danger of ground collisions in clear weather. So when operating in low visibility, there’s even more reason to watch out. We brief approaches, but not ground operations—although we should. Here’s why.
Foggy Flight Plan
Take a simple flight from Quincy, Illinois, to Winona, Minnesota. Spoiler alert: We don’t end up at the destination. It’s low IFR as you file a 250-mile route typical for the Midwest: direct. Followed by: “Cleared as filed.” (Take that, Maryland pilots!) It’s 200-1 at Quincy, just good enough to return via the ILS 4. This is your home base, a fairly busy non-towered airport with airline service and frequent charter stops. It’s a typical Tuesday morning as you hold on the line with Kansas City, then copy the clearance.
You’ll depart in your six-seat piston single from 22, which sets up for a quicker emergency approach. While you had to reconcile the runway selection with the east wind, you figured it was light enough to accept a few knots’ tailwind component. And the longer taxi will let you get the engine warmed up on this chilly morning.
Meanwhile it’s still 500-2 in Winona. (By the way, KONA is the birthplace of record-setting pilot Max Conrad, who’s worth a read because of his cool achievements in stock light singles and twins.) You filed a nearby alternate, La Crosse, Wisconsin. There, the fog common along the Mississippi River has cleared up and the sun’s out, making it a legal plan B. But as it can easily close back up, you planned a 90-minute fuel reserve to divert back west to Rochester. You look forward to cruising at 6,000 feet in blue sky atop the overcast. You also know that once you start down, it’ll be warm enough to ensure there’s no icing. But ensuring that did take some digging around the temperature trends and PIREPs.
Simple flight indeed. You’re finally doing a run-up holding short of 22, after getting up in the dark to spend a couple hours planning, checking charts, procedures, and NOTAM updates for all three airports, then ensuring you are fueled up and good to go IFR. And en route, you’ll be managing all the usual tasks, including checking ahead on weather changes. A little operation called taxiing doesn’t even enter your mind. So it catches you off guard to flip on the radios and hear a Skyhawk calling “clear of Runway 4, taxiing to the FBO, Quincy.”
Getting Warmer
You peer out the left side and can see down much of 22, but the runway intersection isn’t clear. On the CTAF, you confirm the other aircraft had turned off at Foxtrot and crossed 31. Are you sure? Local pilots there know it’s hard to see traffic on the intersecting runway, but some might be unaware that KUIN has a published airport diagram, and the intersection is labeled a Hot Spot, “HS 1.” Some might also not see that Hot Spot tabs appear prominently their EFBs. For KUIN, the entry says: “Rwy 4-22 and Rwy 31 line of sight issues.” Why there? Thousands of airports have crossing runways. Well, there’s tragic history behind it.
The intersection was the site of a fatal collision in 1996 between a Beech 1900 airliner and a King Air. The Beech had landed on 13. Meanwhile, the King Air began its takeoff roll on 4. There was a radio call from a third aircraft mistaken by the airline crew as the King Air, leading them to believe it would hold short for them. All pilots and passengers in both aircraft were killed. The weather was good VFR, too. Hopefully, this Hot Spot has helped prevent accidents and heightened awareness on IFR days … that’s the idea.
Quincy’s Hot Spot is straightforward, but that’s not the case everywhere. Details between the Chart Supplement entry and airport diagram aren’t always consistent. But you don’t realize this ’cause you’re busy flying. Ten minutes from Winona, the AWOS leads you astray with its report of ceilings at 600 feet and “3 miles, mist” as you approach the IAF for the RNAV (GPS) 30. There’s a light east wind, but Runway 12’s approach doesn’t go as low. For either end, 5,199 feet is the declared landing distance. Runway 12 is near the physical end, but 30 has a significant displaced threshold. This becomes an issue at the DA of 1,011 feet, when the numbers don’t appear, just the lead-in lights. You realize the visibility on that side is way lower than reported, maybe not even the minimum required of 3/4 mile. If in doubt, go missed.
On the climbing turn back out, ATC grants vectors to La Crosse. After the handoff to Minnie, you get weather: 400 and 1, and plan the RNAV 36. All goes well, with LPV minimums quite handy. You’ve never been there, so here’s what happens: You take a right-hand turn off the runway and Tower advises you’re now in sight: “Continue on Bravo, cross Runway 4, Alpha to parking. Still moving at idle speed, you drop your digital pen, but you keep going, trying to remember the instructions. Finally, you decide to hit the brakes, a bit unsure. You just rolled through a Hot Spot, confused A with Runway 4 and mixed up B with A, thinking the hidden FBO was ahead at the end. Tower, looking straight down, sees this all the time and helpfully turns you around. Safe inside with an hour to kill while you re-file for Winona, you look up the diagram, the Chart Supplement, and the Hot Spot listing. It is confusing—the entry for KLSE describes two Hot Spots in the Remarks, but doesn’t appear in the little airport sketch (it never does; use the official diagram). Here are two examples of more inconsistency: Council Bluffs, Iowa (KCBF), untowered, has two Hot Spots, not mentioned in the Remarks. Same at Omaha (KOMA), a Class C airport with two Hot Spots. You must see the official airport diagram or open the Hot Spot section of the Chart Supplement to get the whole picture.
Why It Matters
Like the FAR/AIM, charts, and most other FAA-generated publications, it can be challenging to piece together all the information. Hot Spots are no exception. They require reviewing multiple sources to get the whole picture. Still, the fact that they have their own tabs on EFBs and are prominently displayed on airport diagrams means there’s no excuse for overlooking ’em. As shown by the potential dangers of intersecting runways and/or taxiways, any crossing should be treated as a “hot spot,” label or not. And when it’s foggy, misty, nighttime, or a combination, there’s no room for error. On-screen taxi tools are handy for sure, but they certainly interfere with efforts to remain heads-up when on the move. If departing in really low IFR (that’s a technical term), just keeping eyeballs on the centerline is a big chore. At busier airports there are multiple technologies used by ATC for traffic management on the ground, but in most places those aren’t available. So when RVR is reported or there’s less than a half-mile visibility, don’t rely on the comms, aircraft lighting, or assumptions.
Tower/Ground usually can’t see you or anyone else. Moreover, they generally won’t point out a Hot Spot up ahead, but if you do see one on the diagram and want to ask about it, they’ll be happy to advise.
With all the minutia to deal with on a typical IFR flight, you see how easy it is to gloss over ground operations. But if you include charts, briefings, and mindful traffic avoidance in your standard operating procedures, you’ve gone a long way to mitigate that kind of risk. Heck, when the field’s IFR, consider the whole airport a hot spot. Have a good taxi!
One point I stress about taxiing in training is to stop the plane whenever you have to write something down or work the radios. When I clear the runway, I bring the plane to a complete stop to do my post-landing checks, switch from tower to ground, get my taxi instructions written down, and find the route on the taxi diagram before moving again. Similarly, on departure, I stop the plane to copy my clearance and program the radios.
Great standard operating procedure to have for everyone, IFR or VFR. It’s common to see pilots doing cockpit tasks while in motion, or feeling like they must keep rolling as in this scenario.
Great advice at smaller airports with low traffic volumes. But If you try that at a busy airport at rush hour with 20 jets on final, metering in progress and taxiways almost loaded, somebody is going to ask you why you are stopped when you were cleared to taxi. On the other hand, if you delay contacting ground control and just sit there, somebody is going to be mad that you are blocking a taxiway or a highspeed exit that they desperately need for the next 3 guys behind you. My suggestion is to use the copilot seat for an extra screen that is already displaying the airport diagram, big and bright.
If you’re flying into that type of airport, you most likely have two pilots, in which case the PM can do the radios while the PF keeps the plane on the taxiway. But for single-piloted aircraft, at the end of the day, to my thinking, safety always trumps expediency.
BTW, I think looking at a taxi diagram lying on the passenger seat while moving is just asking to end up in the weeds.
My last 9000 hours or so have all been single pilot. I know that’s not much flying for a sample statistic, but I haven’t been in the weeds yet and I don’t plan to. The first 10,000 hours was mostly two pilots with the commuter airlines before everybody had a cell phone, but it was mostly repetitive routes where I knew all the airports by heart and IPads didn’t even exist yet. I just find it much easier to tune radios and do everything myself and not have someone’s distracted head in the way every time I need to see out the right side of the airplane. I’m not really interested in constantly battling a copilot who is texting his wife and snapping pictures of President Trumps 757 while I’m still on an active arrival runway.
Some airplanes do in fact offer better places to mount an IPad than others. But the right seat works fine if you set it up correctly.